Crop agriculture will become more sustainable and robust to climate change if nanocarriers (NCs) are developed that can accurately transfer nutrients, genetic materials, and active agents into plants. Nano-agriculture is still in its infancy as a subject of study, with many societal and scientific obstacles to be addressed.
According to a recent Carnegie Mellon University study, plant nanobiotechnology techniques can deliver nanoforms of active substances, including micronutrients or plant protection chemicals, to particular biological targets.
This increases crop output and overall efficiency, making plants more disease-resistant and detrimental to environmental elements like excessive heat or salinity in the soil. However, researchers still need to discover many of the difficulties in putting new instruments like nanocarriers into practice because the subject of plant nanobiotechnology is still in its early stages.
Gregory Lowry, Walter J. Blenko, Sr. Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, said, “We found that the challenges of using nanocarriers to deliver nutrients in plants parallel those in nanomedicine, which has the advantage of being an established and well-studied field. While there are some key differences between plants and animals, many important parts of our research have been informed by nanomedicine, including identifying nanocarrier designs that can ensure that active agents are effectively packaged, delivered, and released where they are needed.”
Similar to nanomedicine, researchers discovered that the most effective nanocarriers are those that have good interactions with the organisms they are meant for, can successfully cross significant biological obstacles, and maximize beneficial interactions with minimal unexpected consequences. The potentially revolutionary method of building “digital twins” of plants to evaluate the effectiveness of various nanocarrier designs was also investigated in this work.
Revolutionary modeling tools known as “digital twins” have found widespread application in manufacturing, predictive maintenance, and infrastructure management. Researchers’ use of data has been transformed by their extraordinary ability to study a structure and its environment, interpret the data, and utilize it to forecast, alter, and inform physical events.
Lowry and his team might utilize “digital plants” to help design nanocarriers that focus on nutrient delivery to specific plant parts, much as medical researchers use “digital patients,” or digital twin models, to simulate how medications interact and move inside the body. By doing this, nanocarriers would be more capable of delivering vital active agents to areas and times when they are most needed, boosting their efficacy, resilience to challenges, and overall yield of agricultural products.
Lowry said, “Nano-enabled precision delivery of active agents in plants will transform agriculture, but there are critical technical challenges that we must first overcome to realize the full range of its benefits.”
“I’m optimistic about the future of Plant Nanobiotechnology approaches and the beneficial impacts it will have on our ability to produce food sustainably.”
Journal Reference:
- Lowry, G.V., Giraldo, J.P., Steinmetz, N.F. et al. Towards realizing nano-enabled precision delivery in plants. Nat. Nanotechnol. (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41565-024-01667-5